Recently, an at-home healthcare system has been spreading to be used for domestic healthcare. An example of the system is described in Japan Patent Application Laid-Open No. 3053091. This at-home healthcare system comprises a plurality of healthcare measuring devices, including a sphygmomanometer, clinical thermometer, weighing machine, body-fat meter, electrocardiograph, blood sugar tester, etc., which serve to measure heath data, and a terminal unit that receives the health data transmitted from these healthcare measuring devices. The health data are transmitted from this terminal unit to external terminals in hospitals, health centers, caregiving centers, etc. through communication networks.
This at-home healthcare system can be supposed to constitute a data collection apparatus, since it is composed of a plurality of types of measuring devices (healthcare measuring devices) and a data collection apparatus (terminal equipment) that receives and stores identification information and measured values from the measuring devices.
It is unreasonable, in general, to require a user accurately to grasp the method of using any of a large number of types of measuring devices that constitute the data collection apparatus. If the user fails correctly to manipulate the selected measuring device or if the selected measuring device fails to operate correctly, the user must be immediately informed of this situation and made properly to cope with it.
However, the conventional data collection apparatus cannot fully enjoy a function to give guidance as to the way of using the measuring device selected by the user or a function to give information when the user fails correctly to manipulate the selected measuring device or when the selected measuring device fails to operate correctly.